Translative....

[AldenG]

I tried to come up with a guideline on when the construction "palasivat tekemästä" works and when it doesn't, but failed. Is it semantic or grammatical? All I can say is that "Sotilaat palasivat ampumasta sorsia." sounds much better than "Sotilaat palasivat ampumasta bin Ladenin.".

Since this part of the thread began, I've gradually been coming to a new realization about these forms. Partly it was the reaction of people to using -masta for a whole and definite action like the operation in question. Partly it was that paragraph or two at the end of VISK § 931 comparing -massa to -essa.

I suppose on some level, the two prototypes for me have always been käymässä and ostamassa. The first is pretty clearly an activity with no particular completion. You just do it for a while and then stop doing it. I've thought of the second has having a purpose and a point of completion.

But now I'm getting the impression that -massa is sort of the "normal form" and the emphasis is on being in the midst of any process. And -maan and -masta are about entering and leaving (not completing) such a non-terminal process. So even though VISK says that -massa can take a total object if something gets completed, that now seems to be like an exception to the general conceptualization. So to a Finn, it feels more natural to return from "hunting around for ducks" than it does to return from shooting one duck. Palata ostamasta is to return from being in the process of shopping for something, not so much to return from having bought something. (Yes, I know there's a different verb to emphasize shopping rather than buying.) But inevitably people (like me) start to hear a construct that really means one thing as interchangeable with one that means something similar. The subtleties erode. Cf Näin Leenan nukkuvan and Näin Leenaa nukkumassa earlier in this thread and two responses further down. Thus some people are more bothered than others about -masta used to describe having completed an action.

Or something like that.

"Right now its only a notion. But I think I can get money to make into a concept and later turn it into an idea."

[Rob A.]

I suppose on some level, the two prototypes for me have always been käymässä and ostamassa. The first is pretty clearly an activity with no particular completion. You just do it for a while and then stop doing it. I've thought of the second has having a purpose and a point of completion.

But now I'm getting the impression that -massa is sort of the "normal form" and the emphasis is on being in the midst of any process. And -maan and -masta are about entering and leaving (not completing) such a non-terminal process. So even though VISK says that -massa can take a total object if something gets completed, that now seems to be like an exception to the general conceptualization. So to a Finn, it feels more natural to return from "hunting around for ducks" than it does to return from shooting one duck. Palata ostamasta is to return from being in the process of shopping for something, not so much to return from having bought something.......

As usual, you have a good way of explaining this, at least for a native English speaker to interpret.... The partitive is such a big aspect of properly understanding Finnish, it tends to take a while for the subtleties to sink in. This case revolves around "definiteness"/"indefiniteness", "completion/"noncompletion, etc.

As I sensed early on, these "tappamasta" examples were not about the "completion/noncompletion" of the activity the soldiers were engaged in, but rather about the fact that they had returned. It also seems clear to me from the discussion that followed that a native speaker would likely use a different construction if they thought clarity of communciation required it...even though, strictly speaking, the examples as they were laid out were "grammatically correct"...

[Aside: The Fred Karlsson book (Finnish: an essential grammar) nicely explains the use of the "Third Infinitive Elative"...with verbs indicating the idea of ceasing, preventing avoid, etc..... Section 76.3 on Page 190...though it doesn't seem to discuss whether the complement, if any, should be partitive or genitive-accusative...at least I couldn't find anything...]

So I suppose the "take away" message with these examples is that the purpose of the communication will determine whether the partitive or the genitive-accusative is used...and this might require a slightly, or maybe a totally different, grammatical construction...